Photography Tips: Capturing Love On Your Phone

Love is warm, Love is tender, Love is deep, Love is kind, Love is sharing, Love is hard to hold on to.

Love is a feeling; an intense emotion; something we cannot grasp or even touch
– so how on earth do we capture it in a photo?

I would tell you, very carefully.

If you are looking to capture special moments like these you will need to be ready in the blink of an eye. If you thought photographing kids with lots of energy or big groups of people was hard, then trying to capture a feeling can seem even more so.

But when you capture that emotion, when you nail the way you felt at that exact moment – it’s brilliant and everlasting and you won’t care if it’s a tad bit grainy, or a little fuzzy, or your face is out of focus and your subjects are off-center because when you hold it in your hands and pull it up from time to time your heart will melt and you’ll be taken back to that exact moment and remember those feelings all over again.

That’s what good photography is all about, and that’s why I find myself more and more turning to my smart phone to capture these moments.

Here are a few tips I’ve picked up along the way while shooting my own children and trying to capture as many moments like these as I can along the way.

Simple Smartphone Photography Tips

1. Get Ready to Shoot, A lot!

You won’t always capture the whole of a moment on the first, or second, or even fifteenth try. It might takes lots of shots and that is perfectly fine, it’s part of the beauty of the smart phone and the digital age. Take as many shots as you need till you get the right one, then delete the outtakes you don’t need or put them all together in a fun collage or filmstrip style using an app like PicFrame, Diptic or web program like PicMonkey.

Note: We’ll have a post coming soon talking about more of my favorite apps and how I use them!

2. Turn your ringer off!

It only takes one small distraction and the moment is gone forever, don’t let that distraction be the sound of your phone as you sneak up behind your subjects.

3. Accept the fact that you can’t stage these photos

They happen unexpectedly, and completely off the cuff. That’s what makes your smart phone the perfect instrument for capturing them. We almost always have it with us, and you know what they say …. “the best camera, is the one you have with you.”

4. Get up, Get down, Jump all around

Showcasing emotion from an unusual vantage point can pull someone into that moment and make them feel like they are right there with you. Try shooting from above, below, horizontal, eye level, down and at angle. Play with it till you can see what you want to feel in your photo frame.

5. You don’t need eye contact

In fact, if you want to catch pure, raw emotion your subjects probably won’t even know you are photographing them or the image will be of the split second that they realized you were.

6. In fact, you don’t even need a whole body!

Sometimes hands and feet are all you need to say I Love You!

7. Catch them in the act … or even in a dream

Look for tender moments near bedtime, bath time, story time, holding hands, sharing a toy, playing together, reuniting after some time away, a child and their pet, a warm embrace. There are so many opportunities to catch an emotion happening all throughout the day.

This is the first post in a series of smartphone photography tips I’ll be doing for Melissa & Doug these next few months. I think it marries well with everything we do here and I know you’ll get lots of great info from my co-hosts, Zina & Tiffany. Stay tuned for more fun posts in this series to help you be a better photographer for your family.

Join us by sharing your sweet moments on Instagram with the #capturingchildhood hashtag. This week’s theme is Capturing Love, but any childhood moment you want to remember will do. Be sure to follow all of the amazing mamas featured in this post for a steady stream of warm and fuzzy inspiration on life, love and motherhood.

Meg!!!!!!! Ahhh, it is so nice to “see” you. Thanks for commenting here – I’ve been meaning to get in contact with you. We should find each other on Facebook … I am much better at keeping in touch there.

Oh I love these – pinning for sure. I’ve only had an iphone for a few months, but taking in-the-moment photos of my kids (and often my kids AND myself in the form of selfies, as we snuggle on the couch after rest time) is my absolute favorite part of owning one!

UM THANK YOU! Haha, I have been a big fan of yours for a long time, via pinterest. I would hop over to the blog every fairly regularly, but I just knew I always enjoyed your pins. I think I was following you even before I started blogging!

Also, you sharing my post on flipboard brought me about 300 new visitors that week, so I really appreciate it!

Great tips, Stacy, but love that you gave examples. Turning off the ringer is probably my favorite.

It was so great to meet you at the red stamp dinner last week. Was really hoping to connect with you later but guess that wasn’t meant to be. Hope to catch you again at another event! Until then, I’ll be stalking you on pinterest.